antecessor

plural antecessors · alternative obsolete antecessour

1. archaicA person or thing that precedes or goes before.

   1671, Joseph Glanvill, A Præfatory Answer to Mr. Henry Stubbe, London: J. Collins, p. 57, […] the Waldenses[,] Antecessors of the Protestants

   3 more examples

   Yet who says, I have faith in the existence of George II., as his present Majesty’s antecessor and grandfather?

   1810, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Notes on a Barrister’s Hints on Evangelical Preaching”, in Henry Nelson Coleridge, editor, The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, London: W. Pickering, published 1839, page 343

   This, then, is their horrid counsel and device—that each one of their gods should kill his antecessor.

   1890, Grant Allen, chapter 23, in The Great Taboo, London: Chatto & Windus, page 209

   The Book of Change in the general form it is known today [sic] is approximately three thousand years old. It is the third in a series of such texts, its antecessors supposed by some scholars to have been composed six and twelve hundred years earlier.

   1994, Thomas Cleary, The Human Element: A Course in Resourceful Thinking, Boston: Shambhala, Introduction, pp. 14-15

   Synonyms: precursor, predecessor · Antonyms: successor

2. archaicA person from whom one is descended.

   […] promises made to Abraham, and to other antecessors of the Iewes,

   1614, Thomas Wilson, A Commentarie upon the Most Divine Epistle of S. Paul to the Romanes, London, Chapter 11, Dialogue 13, p. 926

   2 more examples

   […] some, hath iudged wrongfully As in reproche, of our country Deniyng playne, moste noble Brute Our antecessor our stocke and our frute.

   1547, Arthur Kelton, A chronycle with a genealogie declaryng that the Brittons and Welshemen are linealiye dyscended from Brute, London: Richard Grafton

   At his mother’s knee he had heard of the exploits of her family, which boasted among its antecessors a surgeon on Nelson’s ship at Trafalgar.

   1992, Lynne Bowen, chapter 1, in Muddling Through: The Remarkable Story of the Barr Colonists, Vancouver: Douglas & MacIntyre, page 5

   Synonyms: ancestor · Antonyms: descendant